


My Boy (Twin Fantasy)

by Anonymous



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Banter, Dark Number Five | The Boy, F/M, Tags Are Hard, no real underage but like, those can coexist, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:35:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26606089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Five flashes her a beatific grin. Drops of red crease around his eyes when he does it, the shape of his face drawn in lines of gore.“Did you miss me?”She did. But missing someone doesn’t always mean you want them to come back.Vanya hasn’t known Five for so long. She’d forgotten how much it hurt to.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 19
Kudos: 139
Collections: Fanfic Anonymous





	My Boy (Twin Fantasy)

Vanya Hargreeves is twelve the first time she sees her brother kill somebody 

_(No, she is nine, seeing him come back from training with a desperate hand-print along his collarbone and a face so triumphant even Reginald looks a little uneasy.)_

But she is twelve the first time she cannot pretend. She is twelve when she watches it happen. Five slices the butter-knife against the line of the intruder’s throat, watches with disinterest as the body falls to the floor and blood arcs through the air like some sort of grotesque sprinkler. 

“Dad needs to update the security system.” He comments, frowning at the crimson puddle soaking his feet. 

“Who is he?” Vanya asks, frantic. She rushes forward but is stopped by Five’s firm hand over her chest. 

“Don’t. Blood is a biohazard.” This doesn’t seem to deter him from taking another bite of his marshmallow-peanut butter sandwich. 

“What do we do?” She stares at the corpse until it blurs out of focus. Five is staring at her with his typical lack of shame, completely disinterested in the body, in the process of death unfolding beneath their polished Mary-James. 

“I’ll tell Pogo.” He assures her. “He won’t make you clean it up.” 

_(She is Number Seven, and she is helpless to stop it.)_

* * *

She has her first kiss to the symphony of blaring fire alarms and the shower of the ceiling-sprinklers. 

The water is stale and flattens the wool of her academy sweater uncomfortably to the bone, but Five’s lips are warm and soft where they meet her own. 

“I wonder what it’s like.” She had said. “In the movies, when they kiss in the rain.” 

Five reached for the lever and showed her. 

* * *

“Where do you want to go?” He asks one day, perched in the same large armchair in the library. His shin touches her arm, and she rereads the same paragraph over and over again as her brain savors the feel of it. 

“What?” 

“When we get away from here. When we’re free.” He says wistfully. _We_. 

“You won’t leave me behind?” She asks hopefully. 

Five grabs her chin, almost bruising with the force of it. Vanya thinks, _his eyes are so very, very green._

“Never, Vanya. Never.” He promises. 

“Pinky promise?” 

He laughs and their fingers interlock, two nearly identical hands into one. 

* * *

He means it. You can break a promise and still mean it, after all. 

* * *

And when he can, when he _knows,_ when he can control the time and space in his veins like the minute quiver of the trigger, he stops breaking it. It looks like this—a line that stops, nothingness for a while, and the line finally beginning again. 

* * *

They’ve been following her for a week. They’re restless too, fed-up with a beginner’s job with no clear end in sight. No blood, no guts, no bonus. 

Not unless Five spices it up. Vanya is warier than his memory, soft bits scarred over from the outside world’s influence. 

But Five is the best assassin the commission has ever seen. So it’s easy to slip the knife over her neck from behind, to grab for her wallet with the other hand. 

A bullet flashes by her neck a split second after he disappears, and the dance begins. 

* * *

Five flashes her a beatific grin. Drops of red crease around his eyes when he does it, the shape of his face drawn in lines of gore. 

“Did you miss me?” 

She did. But missing someone doesn’t always mean you want them to come back. 

She throws up in three gasping, wet heaves. Some gets on his stupid, shiny shoes, but it’s hard to be satisfied about it when Five doesn’t seem to care. He’s pulling her hair back in a flash of blue, breath warm and metallic on her cheek. 

“I came back for you.” He whispers fervently as his hand kneads the dip of her hip. “You waited.” He says this last part like a revelation, the closest thing his staunchly cynical person can get to _religous._

She did wait. It feels like something to be guilty of. 

* * *

“I read your book, you know.” He says flippantly as she numbly follows him into a coffee shop. He isn’t touching her, not anymore, but that sort of magnetism he had when they were little has only grown, so she orbits him helplessly, a piece of debris trapped by the sheer _pull_ of him. The clash of the bell as they enter is so jarring it’s nearly painful. 

“And you still want to see me?” The pastry case is full of the sort of names that bring back memories of French lessons, of Reginald biting at the sloppiness of her pronunciation until her eyes stung. 

“Don’t be stupid, Vanya.” He says, sliding into a counter-seat and patting the stool beside him with purpose. The college-student barista curls her lip, and then shrugs. 

_Believe me_ , Vanya wants to tell her. _It’s even weirder than it looks._

“How’s mom?” He asks, examining the menu on the overhead-chalkboard like it’s a set of equations. 

“Robotic, I guess.” She mumbles, slouching into the seat. The top of her thigh touches his hand before he slides it away, and she feels it in a way she doesn’t know a word to describe. It’s impressive, the way her feelings evade description. Four languages not even counting the dead ones, and Five doesn’t translate into any of them. 

He turns towards her with a sharp raise of the eyebrow. “You guess?” 

The weather is warm, a nice day by all regards, but her cheeks look wind-chafed in the reflection of the countertop. 

“I don’t see her much. It’s awkward. I mean, they didn’t like me much before, and then I wrote the book...” she trails off. 

“Nothing you said was untrue.” He quips with a minute, one-shouldered shrug. He fingers the sugar packets with a surgical precision. He’s just looking for something to do with his hands, Vanya knows. Five doesn’t like his drinks sweet. 

“One coffee. Black.” He tells the resigned employee when she circles back around, having run out of ways to look busy with the coffee-pots. She looks uncomfortable. 

Five does that to people. He has something not-quite-right about his edges, and that’s before he even opens his mouth. 

“And you?” He asks, and Vanya realizes he means for her to order something. She lets out a soft, startled noise. 

“Um. A scone, I guess. Blueberry.” 

He nods decisively at the employee if sealing a corporate deal. Vanya can tell from the curve of her lip that she’s trying not to roll her eyes, and she shifts her assessment of the woman in her mind, opinion aligning somewhere towards favorable. _Jayde_ , her name-tag reads. Vanya ruffles hopefully through her pockets for a possible tip. 

“She always liked you, you know.” Five muses, and it takes Vanya a moment to release he’s returned to the topic of Grace. She shifts nervously in her seat. 

“She’s programmed to.” She counters, a little defensively, as if she has to prove her estrangement, justify her cowardice. 

Five bobs his head a little in an aqueuse. “Ben drove her crazy, though.” He adds with a grin, and for a moment he fits his own shape, looks like a mischievous, _normal_ teenager, like a person. He looks like a memory and it makes Vanya want to sob. 

“Always that fucking zipper.” She says sadly, and if Five notices her tone, he doesn’t comment. 

Five gulps his coffee like he’s trying not to taste it. The scone is good, and it feels wrong, for it to crumble so well in her mouth in the midst of it all. 

* * *

“Who were those people?” She asks finally, replaying the scene in her mind. She can’t get the bloody scene out of her mind. 

“My former co-workers.” Five explains matter-of-factly. They’re sitting in a city metro car, heading towards an address Vanya really would rather forget. 

It’s not hard to imagine the sort of job Five did. It’s not hard to imagine what they wanted to do to her. Relief settles in her bones, cool and thick in the crevices of her soul. 

“They were trying to protect you.” He continues.

The words don’t register at all for a few long moments. The overhead-grips sway in the jolt of the car, and they look how she feels, shaking and trembling and uncertain. 

“Are you here to kill them?” She asks, and the words barely register over the noise of the car. Her throat is impossibly dry. She can’t imagine what it was like when it wasn’t. If was given a glass of water, she doesn’t think she’d know what to do with it. 

“Don’t be stupid, Vanya.” Five says, soft and fond. His bangs hang floppy over one of his eyes in a boyish picture of affection. 

Vanya feels vaguely affronted. She’s not being stupid. Being stupid would be asking if he’s here to kill her. 

If he wanted her dead, he would have done it already. If he wanted her dead, he wouldn’t be looking at her like that. 

“Our siblings are safe.” He promises, holding her hand in his own. They’re nearly the exact same size. 

They’re siblings, _real_ siblings, in their hands if nothing else. Long, delicate fingers, calloused on the tips. 

It’s strange to see her reflection in the smudged window of the Buffalo metro car. She doesn’t feel like she’s grown at all. She’s still the same scared girl, in a skin that is not her own. 

Five’s gotten older, though. She can see it in his eyes, even though his shape is the same. 

Maybe some part of her soul had been lying in wait, had known the inevitability of this all. It’s not a comforting thought, not knowing which parts of her are asleep. 

She reaches into her bag to pull out the pill-bottle, rattling a few out and swallowing them dry. Five watches this with a hawk-like gaze. 

“You don’t have to take them anymore, Van.” He offers, eyes bright. He looks almost _pleading_ , and it settles wrong on his face, doesn’t fit this mask he’s made for himself. 

“What?” She mumbles, bewildered. One of her hands is still folded under his. _I can feel his pulse,_ she realizes with a start. It doesn’t seem right, for him to be a thing of blood and veins in spite of it all. 

“The pills, Vanya. Aren’t you tired? I can help you, he doesn’t know what’s good for you.” He continues fervently. 

“Dad?” 

“Reginald doesn’t know you, Vanya. I do. _Let me help._ ” The words come out in the shape of something else, like he’d intended to say something else and had settled. 

_Let me have you._ Her fingers tap restlessly against the cap of the bottle.

“Obviously.” She retorts, boldened. “He’s Dad.” 

“Then why do you still take those?” He spits, suddenly sharp and hostile. He’s neurotic, has always been, but the numbness to it of that other Vanya has been softened with time, letting it _sting_.

“They _help_.” She cuts back, burying them protectively in her bag. 

“With _what_?” 

“With-“ her voice cuts short. “Anxiety.” She says quietly. “They make me less anxious.” 

His green eyes flash. “They make you _numb_.” 

She can’t argue that. They sit a few blocks in silence, only the murmur of fellow passengers, the rattle of the car, and the muffled sounds of the city to keep them company. 

The car jolts into a stop. They’re at Summer-Best, as close as they’re going to get with the city’s limited transport. They will have to walk the rest of the way. 

She hesitates for a moment, afraid to break that silence they had created. Unsure if he was angry still.

But Five just springs to his feet and strides towards the door, turning back towards her with a quirk of the eyebrow. _Come on,_ it says. _We don’t have all day._

They do have all day. Vanya doesn’t have any lessons or rehearsals scheduled, and she doubts that it’s a coincidence, that Five doesn’t _know_. 

* * *

Five staring pensively up at The Umbrella Academy, hands in his pockets, is something out of a memory. It’s the same red-brick Victorian mansion, the same boy with eyes too sharp for his own good, the same uniform with the embroidered umbrella over the breast. Dizziness pinches the space behind her eyes. 

“Why are we here?” She asks, arms tight around her midsection. 

“Closure.” He pauses, then adds— “Funds.” 

Before she has the clarity of mind to question this response, he’s pulling her close and everything is simmering into a flash of blue. 

The room, like everything else, is unchanged in the face of it all. The hard, wooden desk, the shelves full of books from some University press or another, the high-backed chair that never seems quite empty. Sir Reginald Hargreeves office is the stuff of her nightmares. Her breath catches. 

“ _Five_!” She hisses. “What if he was here?” Five smirks. “Who gives a shit? He isn’t.” 

It hadn’t really clicked, the search for ‘funds’, until Five is doing something precise and complex with lock upon their father’s safe. 

“You’re robbing him.” She realizes. Five doesn’t let his concentration waver from his task as he responds— “Vanya, think. Do you have any idea how much money he made off ou- _my_ image? This is rightfully mine. Call it an advanced inheritance.” 

Vanya doesn’t miss the slip in his voice. It’s so rare for him to do anything less than perfectly, less than complete precision, that it’s impossible for someone not to. Maybe it’s just impossible for her. Anyone who really _knows_ Five would notice, and somehow, in the face of two decades gone by, she has the strangest assurance that she is still the only one. 

It’s a monkey’s paw of a thing to know. _You wanted to be special,_ a voice whispers in her head. _And here you are— Five loves you._

It can feel so good if she lets it. She lets two more pills stick in her dry throat. _Swallowing once, twice, a third time and finally they’re gone._ She can still feel the ghost of their forms in her throat. 

_Ours. Mine_. Vanya has never been one of them, but Five still seems to sometimes forget. She wonders what her powers are, in the subconscious of his mind. 

The safe-door opens with a click. Five tosses her a tied stack of bills, and she stares at it numbly in her hands until she realizes that she’s supposed to put it somewhere on her person. 

She only feels a little guilty as she stacks paper in her bag and between the layers her sweater and shirt. It’s not like it was her idea. 

* * *

They head towards the backdoor. Vanya’s not sure why he doesn’t just zap them out, but she doesn’t question Five as he leads her around dark corners and ornate halls. The place stinks with memories, and it fills her throat. Five raises a finger to her lips, close enough to his feel his breath on her cheek, but Vanya doesn’t think she could talk if she tried. 

At one point, he presses a hand firmly to her chest, warmth of his hand lodging in between two stacks of cash, a layer of wool and cotton from her skin. 

_Stay here,_ the action says. 

She watches as he crouches alongside the second-floor balcony and waits, hands white-knuckled against the banister. For not the first time since his return, she feels so much like a child that her own reflection is startling in the polished brass of a doorknob. 

There’s a self-satisfied smirk on Five’s face, a manic, fire-like energy to his limbs. It feels like yet another diabolical prank, that at any moment he’s going to have to strangle or bribe a witnessing Klaus into silence. 

(It usually didn’t work, but Vanya never got in trouble. Klaus usually neglected to recall she had even been there.)

Suddenly, Pogo scrambles into the main hall, looking unfamiliarly distressed. He dives for an antique rotary phone on a nearby surface. 

Five nods, satisfied. Wordlessly, he grabs Vanya’s wrist to lead her away. 

* * *

When they burst into the sun-streaked green-space at the back of the place, Vanya finally finds her voice.

“What the hell,” she grits out, “is going on?” 

“Nothing you have to worry about.” He responds dismissively. 

A sweet smell wafts from the nearby kitchen windowsill, where a pie sits, looking fresh off the cover of Country-Living magazine. 

“Mom.” Vanya whispers. 

“Help me up.” Five orders, holding out his hands. It’s an absurd and familiar motion, and Vanya laughs in spite of herself as she bends a knee for him to balance upon. 

“I think you might have grown.” She jests. “Perhaps a whole half an inch.” 

“Shut up.” He jumps down, a strawberry-rhubarb pie cradled in his hands. “Just for that, this is all mine now.” 

He doesn’t hold her to it. The pie is just on the painful side of hot, and the crust flakes delightfully against her tongue. Red smears about Five’s mouth in a shade too light for fear. They are young, they are weighed down with stolen bills, and she can almost forget the truth of it all. 

* * *

“What’s with-“ she pauses, searching for the right words, “you’re still thirteen.” 

Five wipes the rhubarb filling from around his mouth and licks it off his hand like a cat. 

“I’m actually sixty.” He responds casually. 

“That doesn’t actually clarify things.” Vanya laughs a little as she says it, because it’s hard to be mad at Five for being an incomprehensible little shit when that’s all he’s ever been. 

“Time travel. Fucked up an equation. Ended up in schoolboy shorts.” He levels her a glance. “I appreciate you not pointing it out until now. “ 

“I think you showing up as an old guy would feel weirder, honestly.” Vanya muses. 

“It’s about the _dignity_ of it.” Five protests, but he looks pleased all the same. 

* * *

“Okay.” He says finally, after probably twenty minutes or so of basking in a particularly sunny spot. “Do you have anyone you’re particularly attached to in this timeline?” He looks a little disgruntled as he says it. 

“What?” Vanya says for what is probably the twentieth time that day. 

He sends her a sharp look, green eyes finding her soul and poking at it. “We can’t stay here, Vanya. It’s not safe. You saw those people I had to dispose of.” He says it so clinically, ‘dispose of’. Like he’s just doing a chore. 

Twenty years ago, she might have been cowed by his sharp tone and stern gaze. She might have sat back and let him run her life.

But he’s the one who left, and she’s managed herself too long to let her siblings’ supernatural bullshit run her life. Even this sibling. _Especially_ this sibling. 

“You said they were _protecting_ me. You’re the one who killed them!” Vanya protests. 

“Protecting you from what, Vanya? If it was safe, they wouldn’t be protecting you at all!” There’s something cagey in the way he says it, like he’s not saying the whole truth. 

Vanya is tired of being led blindly into the dark. 

“I don’t know. But I think you do.” She retorts, voice cold. The pie settles uncomfortably in her stomach. 

Five’s nostrils flare. The corner of his mouth twitches like it’s trying to snarl.

“ _Vanya_.” He warns. 

“Quentin.” She replies with feigned neutrality.

Five shoots to his feet, and he’s only a few inches taller than her but she’s sitting down and there’s a density to the way he occupies space that always makes it seem as though he’s towering. 

“ _Listen to me, Vanya. You are in danger, and I’m the only person who gives a shit about protecting you._ ” He hisses, and each word is enunciated and clipped like a sentence of its own. It’s a completely immature show of authority. She’s mad that it works. 

“Why were they doing it then?” She manages, voice coming out weak and small. 

“They don’t care if you die, as long as you do it at the right time and place. They were saving you for later.” He says it like one might say that they were wrapping some lasagna in tinfoil for lunch tomorrow. A chill goes down her spine. 

_My former coworkers,_ he had said. 

“Five,” She asks with dread, “ _what_ did you do?” 

He lets out a resigned sigh, looking into the brick-building horizon of the city historic district. His hand is twitching, like it’s trying to turn something over and over, but has nothing to use for the purpose. ADHD, Grace had informed Reginald when they were kids. It’s strangely humanizing, those restlessly turning hands. 

“I think you know.” He responds. 

“ _Five_.” 

“I was an assassin. A damn good one too.” He admits, looking down at her. His right hand drifts to her hair, seemingly without his own notice. 

She nods, a lump in her throat. She’s not surprised. It’d almost be a waste for him to be anything else. 

* * *

She doesn’t have anything worth keeping at her apartment and Five doesn’t bother to ask. _You waited,_ his voice echoes in her head. 

The violin case is a familiar weight across her back, and Five’s hand fits perfectly against her own. 

It’s all she has. It’s all she ever really has had. 

Five steals a car. Vanya had protested, pointed out that they easily had the money on their persons to rent, but he just waves her concerns aside and adjusts the driver’s seat as far forwards as it will go. His stern little face peering over the steering wheel looks like a general scoping the battlefield. 

“Car rental agencies need identification.” He explains, adjusting the mirrors and pausing to wipe away a remaining smudge of pie. “I’d rather not be tracked.” 

“You can’t just steal a car.” Vanya protests. 

He raises an eyebrow in her direction, as if to say _‘and yet_ ’. 

“The owner is a republican. A rich one.” He assures her. Vanya relents upon this point. 

“You know.” She says finally, unsure if she should broach the obvious. “I can drive. If you don’t want to be noticed. I have a license and everything.” 

Five narrows his eyes, considers, and then signs and reluctantly scrambles over the armrest to switch seats. 

“Ow. Ow. What the hell, Five? Just use the door.” She mutters as she slides him none-too-gently off her lap and lets herself out to walk around to the driver’s side like a normal person.

* * *

Five picks a sweet-looking BNB upstate along the border of Vermont. 

“I would’ve pictured something seedier.” She says finally as he tells her to pull over at the adorable Victorian home. “Or more extravagant.” She adds, frowning. 

Five scowls. “Exactly. I hate people. They won’t find us here.” 

It is almost a sacrifice. Despite her irritation at being essentially kidnapped, Vanya feels something warm. 

“It’s alright,” he’s saying as he slams the car door shut with the smooth motion of an adult twisted eerily wrong into his teenage limbs. “We won’t be here long.” 

“What?” Vanya asks, which is a word she finds herself using around Five often. She has great hearing, prides herself on the distinction of notes, but Five so often makes her beg for clarification. 

Five flicks invisible dust off his vest. He’d stopped at Nordstroms and sent her in with highly specific orders on what to purchase. It looks exactly like the uniform for some preparatory school in Connecticut, or Buffalo, and Vanya nearly sighs in equal parts exasperation and amusement every time she sees him. 

“If you didn’t want to be recognized,” she had said, “you could have just covered the logo.” 

He had looked a little chastised in spite of himself. 

But not enough to prevent him from gracelessly shuffling out of an old vest and plaid into new while the car-brights pierced the empty, wild night. In the corner of her eye, it was impossible to determine whether a flash was the brights reflected or something on the wide and rather intimidating dash or a flash of pale skin. She didn’t look— that’s not good driving, after all.

* * *

That night, after she’s happily accepted a plate of snickerdoodle cookies from the kindly woman hosting them and Five twitches like a barely-contained wildfire and they both endure her cooing over her ‘precocious little brother’, Five presses against her side. The room had two beds, but Five had tossed their sparse belongings on one, expertly compacted the bills into a bag and slid that into the provided safe, and flopped onto the other like a particularly pretentious starfish. 

After a moment, he had rolled over and tapped the space next to him expectantly. 

This, in of itself, had not been quite at all unusual, a natural continuation of when he would teleport into her room and murmur late into the night about equations and time and other things that slipped through the cracks of her brain like water. 

But now he’s shirtless and warm and breathing softly against her neck. His hand is wandering. After a moment, she shoves him off with a pant. 

He has the audacity to look offended. The alarm clock casts an unearthliness to his features, something not quite human. 

“What?” He whines. 

“No.” She says, firmly. “It’s weird. You’re like, 13.” 

Five frowns. “You know I’m the cradle-robber here, right? I’m 60. That’s twice your age.”

“You’re physically a _child_. And I’m...not.” 

“A teenager.” He clarifies, but grumpily relents. 

Somehow, Vanya isn’t quite satisfied. She can hear the gears turning in his brain like a second heartbeat, and it’s almost enough to keep her from sleep. 

Not quite, though. It’s been a very, very long day. 

* * *

The next morning Five wakes before her and leaves. There’s a note on the side-table. _Be back in three hours. Promise._ There’s a crude little drawing of a hand with the pinky sticking out. Vanya’s cheeks hurt from smiling at the sight of it. 

* * *

He returns smelling like an Indian restaurant. 

“Curry?” Vanya asks, frowning. 

“No.” He responds, fringe bobbing as he looks up at her. “Why? Do you want some?” 

“You smell like it.” She clarifies. Her stomach curls at the thought of curry at 10AM. 

He grins like a villain. “Yeah.” He says, smug and restless. “I suppose I do. Let’s go get brunch.” 

They do just that. The WaffleHouse employees don’t bat an eye at the disconcerting teenage boy in uniform or the wallflower woman he’s dragging behind him. They’ve seen stranger things. 

* * *

“What do they put in these-“ Vanya asks around a full mouth, “to make them so damn good.” 

Five grins and dangles an unreasonably large bit of waffle over his mouth like a shark. “I stole the recipe.” 

Vanya grins like a little kid in spite of herself. “What? Today?” 

Five swallows it in one gulp. He shoots a conspiratory grin at her over the rim of his coffee mug. _Black, always black._

“Nah. At a job back in the 90’s.” 

Vanya tries not to let the reminder of Five’s _employment_ dim her pleasant mood. 

“I’ll miss the ambiance, though.” Five comments casually. Vanya locks the part of her that knows exactly what he means behind a steel door. She never liked facing the obvious. 

* * *

“Are there any periods you’ve ever wanted to see?” Five asks as they leave, full and sated. A bird chirps blissfully from some nearby shrub. 

“What?” She asks, even though she knows what he’s asking. 

“Don’t be stupid, Vanya.” Five responds instinctually, which is his way of saying that he doesn’t feel like explaining things she already understands. Vanya’s throat is tight and dry, breath rattling like a ghost. 

“I don’t like skirts. Or dresses.” She says stubbornly, feeling the phantom itch of her Umbrella Academy garb over her chest and thighs. 

Five works his fingertips into his brow with a sigh. “That might be difficult.” He sends her an appraising glance. “Unless you don’t mind being my husband. Which would pose other problems, depending where and when.” 

“Fine. No corsets. That’s a hard rule.” Vanya relents. 

“I can do that.” He assures her. “I’ll show some preference for late-century 20th, too. Just for you.” 

“We won’t stay?” She frowns.

“Not safe.” He admits. “Besides, isn’t it so boring, trapped in a time and place?” Vanya can’t comment— she’s never known anything else. Then again, she is awfully bored. 

“We’ll always be together.” He promises. “You’re mine.” 

Vanya is self-aware enough to know she shouldn’t find it as reassuring as she does. 

* * *

The picturesque Victorian porch of the BNB melts into a flash of blue. Nothing and everything swallows her, the world turning inside out in a way her mind breaks trying to comprehend. Five’s hand in hers is warm and firm. 

She arrives with a gasping breath, dry heaving into the dirt. Five lands silently and gracefully like a falling feline. 

“Are you okay?” He murmurs, rubbing circles into her shoulder blades. 

“I hate that.” She manages to get out. He smiles, only a little mocking. 

“It gets better.” 

Hair sticks to her mouth, no longer pulled back. 

“Here-“ Five offers a hair tie from around his wrist. 

“Thanks.” She gasps out, reaching back to secure at least one tenet of familiarity. 

Before her hands can drift back to her sides, Five cradles her cheeks and kisses her mouth. In the green-tinged reflection of his eyes, she sees the scared picture of a remembered girl.

“What did you do?” She asks when he pulls away, skin itching with the realization. 

Five grins effortlessly. “I know how to do it on purpose, now. It’s awfully convenient, in more ways than one.” 

His hand lingers over the curve of her hip. “We’re the same now, see? You can’t say no.” 

Vanya is sure he doesn’t realize how he sounds. At the very least, she knows he doesn’t care. 

“We’ll never die.” He promises, and Vanya gets the sinking feeling that this one he will keep. 

His breath is warm and soft against her too-young lips, and the same sun rises against the backdrop of an unfamiliar theatre. 

She hasn’t known Five for so long. She’d forgotten how much it hurt to.


End file.
